Like So Much Glass
by jenni3penny
Summary: Spoilers for 'Chained'. S2: E10. Tony/Gibbs, minor Kibbs implied. "Because one can kiss and kill and like and love and hate and hurt all at once and if anyone has ever taught him that so very well, it's Jethro Gibbs..."


"Shut up."

It grits through his teeth like so many shattered up pieces of glass, cutting through the both of them and then suddenly, sharding the stillness, scattering anything else they could have (should have) been saying to each other if either of them could communicate their emotions. The words are mashed but sharp and he's surprised to realize that, this time, he's not sure which of them said those two words first.

And Tony just takes the gruff and roughness in stride, baring his lips to the way the other man slams their kissing together like violence and relief at once. He lets it come over him and lets Gibbs grab against his head like the lifeline he sure of shit coulda used a few hours earlier. Their timing is sometimes impeccable and sometimes it's goddamn disastrous. Even he's unsure as to where they landed on that spectrum in this case...

"You really liked him?"

He's still talking through his teeth and growling through kisses and Christ Almighty, if Kate or the Probie could see them now there'd be no end to the therapy sessions that'd have to take place – for every goddamn one of them... But, all in all, he knows - shit has to happen once in a great and wonderful while and sometimes that shit lands on him to handle. Because Gibbs can love pretty Caitlin Todd from the far desk over and pretend the world is a rose colored and tastes like the cinnamon candies she keeps in her drawer (as though Tony doesn't know that they trade gum and those red wrapped little prizes after coffee – the sweet-hearted and more-love-than-like secrets they trade in their smiles). And he can knuckle Probie's head like a proud dad at a baseball game and clap him on the shoulder with a wide grinning " _Well done, Timmy m'boy_ ".

But Gibbs can't show love to either of them quite this angrily, not with kisses that are starting to taste metallic and hands that land like iron, fingers wrapping and chaining on him.

But... he can't blame them either, really. Not for that, not for this.

For having to be the one in that car, chained to that man-sized doofus.

A bit of him feels guilty for blaming them for the position he and Gibbs have silently put him in. Both of them had to have been worried as hell... the both of them would have been terrified because, he knows they love him. They could have shown it too. It's okay for the two of them, the pretty paramour and the little boy who idolizes... but Gibbs wouldn't have, though. Wouldn't have allowed it. Can't manage to choke a whole lotta love out for his _Senior. Fucking. Field. Agent_. Not in front of them. Not even after Tony's almost died. Not until they're alone together.

This. Whatever this repetitive and, at the same time singular, moment has become. _This_ is Gibbs' only concession, his only caveat when it comes to showing one Anthony DiNozzo Jr that he worries and it comes (he's gonna need to come sooner that usual, he's gonna need to feel alive) when he's working the younger man's pants open with relentless fingers and a grit in his eyes that cuts them toward crystalline rather than just plain blue.

He thinks, while Gibbs is scouring his shirt from his chest that, man, he'd really actually sorta liked that kid... whackadoo crazy and deluded as he'd been. He'd really liked him. Even as he'd shot him dead. Because one can kiss and kill and like and love and hate and hurt all at once and if anyone has ever taught him that so very well, it's Jethro Gibbs and the lessons he keeps in kisses that elsewhere _do not exist_.

And Gibbs had known that somehow, made some flippant remark and brushed it all off like pieces of safety glass from his coat sleeve after a car crashing and a window shattering.

It hadn't been jealousy. It had been protection.

It's just that when Gibbs heads up a protection detail he does it like a fucking Commandant.

They crumble (together, the two of them), they grit and crash onto the older man's couch like lovers that really, actually, sorta, like each other. So, yeah, he'd shot the son of a bitch dead in the back seat (because it doesn't matter how much you like someone if, in the end, they've got a blade at your throat or a gun to your head or something rushing like a muddy flood of love from their mouth to yours).

So, yeah, he'd sorta liked the guy – when he hadn't been an enormous pain in the ass.

So, no, he isn't necessarily _in love_ with his boss.

But, yeah, sure... he really ( _really_ ) likes him.


End file.
